BIG KITTY MINITOUR
This is a tour diary about the mini-tour that I did from June 6th-14th in 2026. I played 6 shows in those days, in the states of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, in the United States of America. I hope you enjoy this account of that time, and maybe even learn about some nice musicians and people.
BRIEF PROLOGUE
A few months ago, I got a message from Amos Oaks, the director of Knoxville Community Media, asking me to play at the 50th anniversary celebration of that great organization. I said YES.
GETTING THERE
On 5 June 2026 I left for Knoxville.
The first vehicle of many on this the trip was trusty old BB, our 1998 iridescent blue/purple Fiat Panda, accompanied by Yuri and Naoko. They dropped me off at a train I took into Toulouse. From the Matabiau train station, I took the metro to a hostel where I spent the night relatively near the airport. This night already seems like so long ago. I had a little bed cubby in a room with a few other guys, who I didn’t really talk to (it was already past 10PM when I arrived so they were probably just hoping I wouldn’t make lots of paper shuffling and cutting noises in my bed … sorry guys!) and I stayed up fairly late in the cubby, cutting and pasting covers for my “Mystery Tapes” – one-of-a-kind, not-available-on-the-internet recordings full of songs, stories, improvisations, and tape experiments.
At 6AM the next morning, after about 4 hours of sleep, I woke up and caught the tram, then a bus, to the Toulouse-Blagnac airport. As I was checking in at a computer kiosk, I was given the option to check my backpack. I was already really tired of carrying it around, so the idea of having it carried for me was quite tempting. But, the idea also occurred to me that it could easily get lost. I decided to risk checking it (it got lost).
My first flight was to Paris. I had a window seat and enjoyed looking out at the clouds and the shrinking landscape. It’s been nearly six years living in France, and I found this time that I felt different traveling back to the USA. I felt more like France was home, and that I would miss being there and speaking French every day. I felt sad to leave. Most likely I cried, but I don’t remember clearly, just go ahead and imagine me weeping wistfully while looking out the window.
The next flight went from Paris to Atlanta. I had an aisle seat on this one, which I was happy about, as I anticipated using the bathroom four to six times, which proved to be exactly accurate.
On this flight, outside of maybe two hours of light sleeping, I worked on various things for the shows, such as tweaking the arrangements of some of the computer-composed songs I would be doing, thinking about the order of set lists, memorizing, rewriting lyrics. I would occasionally look around at peoples’ screens — someone was watching Titanic, and I checked in periodically to see what was happening. I remember that movie pretty well despite only having seen it in theaters once upon its initial release. Someone else was watching a movie about football and Philip Fulmer (a coach of the University of Tennessee football team in the 1990s, who is very famous within that world, and who lived near me as I was growing up and he was riding high on his football success). God – that sneaky guy – was clearly laying down some foreshadowing of what was to come over the next less-than-two weeks — travelling to Knoxville, the US southeast, a land that, as much as I love it, has a tendency to take itself for the whole world. “Get back in the game boy! I wanna see that hustle!” I saw many other snatches of films as I was working, sending my brain on tangent after tangent. I kept my mask on the whole time.
The food was pretty good. They had cheese tortellini for us vegetarians (though to me it looked more like ravioli). Since I had the mask on, it took me a long time to eat, longer than I was given, which is to say, the tray got taken away before I finished, so I did not get to the tiramisu. Probably for the best, and perhaps this was another case of divine intervention. I held on to the wooden knife and spoon – which “came in useful” as the spreader of the peanut butter sandwiches that made up about 90 percent of my diet on this trip.
Once at the Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta, I was fairly immediately overwhelmed by the amount of American English I heard around me. It was also amazing to be somewhere where I was a child – because I remember being in the Atlanta airport as a child – it was one of the first places I encountered anything approaching public transportation, in the form of the underground train that takes you between terminals. This time in the tram car, it was as crowded as ever, and there were two people beside me, both around fifty years old, African-American, and employees of airlines by their uniforms, and the guy was really heavily flirting in a fairly cringey, cheesy way, though it was also kind of sweet. I got the feeling that he watched a lot of romantic comedies, it felt like he was acting. And that added to this kind of artificial feeling – “is this really happening?” He gave the woman some money from a foreign country – I suppose he had just come from somewhere on a plane, and they talked a bit about different currencies and were laughing together – and then I had to get away to find my airplane.
I was also quite nervous about the security process. Specifically, I was determined to refuse to have facial recognition used on me. If, like me, you haven’t flown in a while, they use face scanners instead of physically checking your passport now, and they don’t make any effort to tell you that it is optional. My goal was simply not to comply to that request, as a way of resisting surveillance. So, I did this twice. The first time was in Paris – I was kind of locked in between two gates and the only way to get out was through a facial recognition device. I turned around and saw the guard telling me to look into the scanner. I said (through my FFP2 mask) “I don’t want to,” and the officer said, “What?” Then she said, “Oh it opened anyway!” It opened when my back was turned. Not sure if it managed to read my face or not, but I never de-masked and simply proceeded. The next time was at the Atlanta border check — but this room didn’t seem the same as the passport check room I remember. It was much smaller, and there weren’t nearly as many desks, officers, or people waiting in line (perhaps the effect of replacing personnel with face scanners). I walked up to the police officer there and said, “I don’t want to do facial recognition,” and he was really chill and nice about it. He said something like, “Oh you don’t want to? That’s fine, just go over there and have your passport checked.” Whoa! OK, so, my experience was very easy. I’ll definitely keep refusing facial recognition. The officer who checked my passport was a blonde lady whose name tag read “CLARK.”
Well, I soon found that my bag was lost, because, though I wasn’t at my final destination, you are supposed to get your checked bags upon entering the country for the customs inspection. Well, the bag did not show up, and as it turns out, it was in Detroit. Aanyway, I proceeded to wait for the next flight to Knoxville. While there, I had my first chance of seeing people who were likely to be from Tennessee, and like the flirting conversation I eavesdropped upon earlier, was almost like a show. There was an older couple that were returning from the UK. They had an unmistakable white appalachian accent. They called out to someone they knew – another chubby white guy in overalls. I was working on something, but through my eavesdropping I learned that he was a farmer AND worked at Amazon. He also made some self-deprecating jokes about his weight, and I was just kind of amazed to be around people I could understand so easily that I couldn’t help overhearing their conversation.
Soon we were all on the airplane together – I had another window seat, and it was a beautiful thing to fly from Atlanta to Knoxville — a very short flight, less than an hour. It was gorgeous.
Once landed in Knoxville, I realised that I had booked my rental car for the day after my arrival. So I called up Amos who came to pick me up in his Jeep, wearing a cowboy hat. He drove me back to his place where he set me up to sleep. I was in a state of amazement. This was my hometown, which was recognizable, though it had changed considerably – new highway lanes and bridges, Green Acres Flea Market had burned down, the geodesic dome next to it was gone… then, Knoxville is quite different, particularly around the University – a completely different environment than when I used to walk around there.
Amos offered to take me to dinner, but I suggested going to a grocery store instead. He took me to Three Rivers Market (a co-op) where I got some peanut butter, bread, kefir-fermented milk, dark chocolate, two apples and one very unripe nectarine. This cost about 30 dollars! (Thank you Amos). The cashier was wearing a Dr. Octagon t-shirt. I’ve never seen one of those, so I couldn’t help blurting out something like “Whoa, a Dr Octagon t-shirt!” and sing “Blue flowers!” Anyway… I went back to Amos’s house, met his 22-year old black cat Farruka (not sure how it’s spelled–Farouka?) and saw his house, his Tennessee backyard, and found he’d set up his own bed for me and was sleeping in his art room… that was nice of him! His bed is very comfortable and I was extremely sleepy so I went ahead and slept.
DAY 1: 5 June 2026. Knoxville.
I woke up at 7 the next morning with Amos and he took me to Java for coffee. I’ve been going to that same coffee shop since I was a kid, in the early 90s, with my mom and my brother. As I grew up I went there often for coffee and for the occasional punk rock show (I’m trying to remember the name of this one Knoxville punk band I used to go see around 2000… any help?)
It was hard to believe any of it was real. The ceiling is still painted with the same imitation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The tables and chairs and couches were the same, even the coffee cups seemed like the same ones (white with very thick walls). Only the prices had changed. A regular cup of coffee was 4 bucks! Actually, I also noticed that the pastries were exactly what you’d find in France (croissant, pain au chocolat, etc) but very nice-looking versions. That’s pretty different than what I remember!
That first day in Knoxville, I was not going to perform, but only adjust to the jet lag and enjoy the first day of the two-day Knoxville Community Media event.
Because of the mistake I mentioned earlier, I did not have a car this first day, which was inconvenient, but perfect. Before I decided to rent a car, actually, I was thinking I would take buses and just walk or get rides if needed in the various cities I was going to (Knoxville, Chattanooga and Nashville Tennessee; Asheville, North Carolina; Birmingham, Alabama; and Atlanta, Georgia). However, the first trip I would need to make was from Knoxville to Asheville, and I discovered, upon trying to buy a bus ticket, that no bus route exists between those cities! The Knoxville Greyhound station has closed up. Weird. I remember picking my dad up there when I was a kid.
Well, it would’ve been quite difficult to make it without using a car on this trip – the only way would be arranging car rides. But, for the first day, not needing to travel between cities, it was pretty great. I went on foot from Amos’s house to the Pilot Light that morning, and really enjoyed the walk. I grew up walking around Maryville, where people normally drive, and where walking is so infrequent that their pedestrian accommodations very inconsistent. The only people I crossed on the road in Knoxville were clearly people that had no other choice – they were poor, with skin wrinkled and leathery from sun exposure. The huge divide between rich and poor always on display. In France as well, by the way – only perhaps a notch less. But it feels more brutal here, as public services (such as the aforementioned transport) are so limited, and hitchhiking is not really done. Hitchhiking is fairly common in the part of France where I live, and I pick up hitchhikers and hitchhike myself when I need to.
So I had to get from Amos’s house to the Pilot Light, and my only shoes were a pair of espadrilles that I’d bought at the grocery store just before I left. They’re not really meant for walking/running fast over long distances on concrete sidewalks, but they were also not too too bad. I was in awe of the beauties of Knoxville, the overgrowth of pokeweed and kudzu, the trash, the cigarette ads, the church signs (TODAY BE A BLESSING TO SOMEBODY). (I’m not being ironic). It was so great to be walking there, and as I said, I most likely wouldn’t have been walking if I’d rented the car for the right day. It reminded me of when I was a kid, before I could drive, and I had this thought, “Never forget the days when you had to walk.” I hadn’t thought of that in a long time, but it came back to me.
I made it to the Pilot Light sometime around 11:30, where a 3-piece band including Amos’ brother Thomas (keys and singing), and a drummer and trombone player were singing gospel music under the name the Jackson Avenue Gospel Revival. (The Pilot Light is located on Jackson Ave). They were playing “Shine” By Collective Soul when I entered, then proceeded to other gospel tunes. There were very few people in attendance, but Amos got up and danced and so did I, and a couple others joined in. Great fun. After their set, a couple of talks followed: one on the history of the name Tennessee, and another on home movies. These two topics related a lot to some of the new songs I was gonna be playing!
After these brief talks, Amos and Thomas’s parents took the stage with Thomas (from the first band) and did some hilarious little country comedy routines, followed by stories from their dad. While he was telling the stories, I received a notice on my cell phonen that my bag had been delivered to Amos’s door. So, I was going to have to go back that whole 1.5 hour walk, but I also had to get back to the Pilot Light within 2 hours to see Joseph Allred’s set (IG: @poorfaulkner). I did not want to miss it, but I also really did not want my bag to get nicked. So I set out on foot, and before long, these electric scooters caught my eye – you know, the ones you can rent that they leave scattered around city streets… I decided to try to rent one (requires an app, so something I generally avoid as it often ends in tears). This time, however, I actually succeeded in renting the scooter and was very happily flying up and down hills effortlessly, thinking I would be back in no time! However, at a certain distance from downtown, the scooter completely stopped working. I suppose they only want you to use them to travel within certain radius, which is understandable but quite inconvenient. So I got about halfway to Amos’s house, then ran the rest of the way in those espadrilles. I was relieved to find my bag there! I put it inside and changed clothes (I was still wearing the clothes from the airplane). Then I ran back to the scooter and was very relieved (and a little scared to share the road with cars) to be able to ride it back to the Pilot Light, where Joseph was already playing.
I sat down on the refreshingly cool concrete floor and listened to the magic. So beautiful to hear the guitar played like that, and I also love hearing Joseph’s stories and comments and his very comforting accent. I talked to him afterwards and he was as sweet as when we met the first time, when we played together at the Pilot Light 13 years before, when Yuri was pregnant with Naoko, and Glenn Jones played. Glenn Jones’s record, that I got at that show, became the only reliable music for calming baby Naoko down when she would get upset.
Well, I had my lost luggage, but I also needed to get my rental car, so I put a call out on Instagram with a picture of that church sign (TODAY BE A BLESSING TO SOMEBODY) for anyone who could give me a ride, and my “blessing” that day was my friend Kit who came to pick me up after his workday. The airport is a fairly long drive outside of Knoxville, so I really appreciated it. We chatted a bit and I promised him an ice cream.
I picked up my car, which was rented through a gig economy version of a car rental service, which is very odd experience. I was all alone in the airport parking lot, walking around until I recognized the car from the photo, then took the key out of a coded lock box hanging on the window. I was texting the owner of the car who seemed to also be in the parking lot, but never saw him. I was prompted by the app to take a great many photographs of the condition of the car (a 2013 Toyota Prius – really an ideal car, but far too expensive, and yet the cheapest thing I could find).
I drove back to Knoxville where I went to visit my mom and brother Brad. They were staying in an Airbnb rental on Gay Street. There was a lot of activity in Knoxville that day, and parking was hard to find. I pulled into a parking garage where several empty spots were inndicated, but I could not get the REQUIRED APP to work with my French phone number, and a car was waitign behind me, so I decided to loop around to the exit and look elsewhere. However, I was blocked in the garage by an enormous white pickup truck that was so tall it was scraping against the roof of the garage. There was a male-female couple inside who were panicking and at first they got mad at me (I have to assume out of frustration and embarrassment at their situation because all I was doing was existing there… though I was also trying to take photos because it was so funny). Then the woman became very apologetic, “Ahm sew sawrey…” (that’s my attempt to write her accent saying “I’m so sorry”) Anyway, I found another lot across the street which was run by the city and free and required no app or anything! Hurrah! Thanks God!
So I went up to see Mom and Brad (and borrow Brad’s guitar). We talked a bit, and then went to see an Indonesian-style shadow puppet and Gamelan music show at The Point, a church in downtown Knoxville. This was part of the same festival I was playing at, hosted by Knoxville Community Media! Before the show, there were some modular synthesisers that an Indonesian musician name had created out of local materials – Brad, Mom, and I milled about, Brad met some old friends and chatted with them and I walked around the church-venue playing the synthesizers made from 1) tree branches, 2) mason jars filled with moonshine, 3) not a synth, but slices of tree trunks on turntables. The show was dazzling – Indonesian in style but quite local in themes (basically addressing colonization of Tennessee up through TVA) and I really really dug the music, which was gamelan but also mixed with synthesizers and electronic music.
And that basically concluded the night for me. I went back to Amos’s bed and slept long, long, long…
DAY 2: 6 June 2026. Knoxville.
In the morning I woke up again, a little later than Amos this time. He went on to the Pilot Light to set up the anniversary, and I stayed behind to practice with Brad’s guitar. His guitar has a narrower neck than what I’m used to, but is honestly much easier to play and more in tune, especially when playing higher up on the neck, than my guitar is.
Brad’s guitar is also the first I remember really learning to play a song on, which was the Beatles’ “Across the Universe.”
So, I played a bit in the morning, ate my breakfast rations and drove to the Pilot Light in my rented Prius. This was the day I was going to perform (at 7:15 PM). I got to the venue early and enjoyed, and I mean really enjoyed, some very good music. I arrived in the midst of several rappers, including Junie.mp3 (Instagram: @junie.mp3) who was performing when I walked in, and then Geonovah rapping with the band Dice Jail for a full half-hour-ish set. I really was amazed by the whole sound of the group. Really tough drummer and the bass was locked in, and a keyboard player (wearing a UT Vols cap) and playing atmospheric slightly menacing one note patterns and Geonovah (pronounced je-NO-vuh, Instagram: @geonovah) rapping over it. The band is called Dice Jail (@dicejailisdead). Can’t really overstate how awesome it was!
A PAUSE to mention that I was supposed to release the cassettes for my album, Riding a Mule Through the Winter Forest, on this day (which would have been my grandmother’s 110th birthday). However, the tapes were late (“supply chain issue”) and so this was a disappointment…
There was also a Dolly Parton festival going on outside! At first I thought it was a Pride fest, because it was June, and that same day Naoko and Yuri were at a Pride parade in Toulouse, and because of the almost rainbow-colored decorations. There was some crossover, of course–perhaps an association with Dolly is one way Pride can be more acceptable to a general Tennessee crowd. In fact, I stepped out of the Pilot Light for a moment to see one contestant in the Dolly Parton lookalike contest (well, I assumed this was going on, because there were a few people walking around in Dolly get-ups). The one contestant I saw was superb: a drag performer who goes by Sweet T. They sang “Go To Hell” which is a song I was not familiar with but included a lot of sermonising and the “shocking” chorus of “Go to hell!” Which could be taken as an address to the listener, but was in fact addressed to Satan himself! I must say their lip synching was extraordinarily on point, the dance routine was meticulously dialed-in, and the costuming and makeup were extraordinary. Five stars for Sweet T! I had my picture taken with Sweet T by someone who seemed like a photographer hired by the event, but I was too shy to ask to have one taken with my own camera, and to ask where I could possibly find the photograph after the fact! Can anybody find this for me??
There was also a giant Dolly puppet!
I set up my merch table in the Pilot Light and acquired several t-shirts – 2 Knoxville Community Media and 2 Pilot Light ones. I talked to Kelsey who I think had been doing sound earlier, and she told me that she had conserved a Reese’s cup in her freezer that I’d thrown out last time I played there. Also in her freezer are a dead copperhead and other animals. I didn’t ever find out if she had any storage space for frozen goods such as ice cream, pizzas, et cetera, but I was intending to ask. I talked to Logan who was working the bar–I asked him if he hated art, because earlier, I had noticed just some graffiti on one of the Pilot Light toilets that said, “Every time you wash me I fade a little bit. Logan, do you hate art?” As it turns out Logan is an artist and a very nice one at that, and HE made that graffiti himself!
I met Birch and Brenna From the band MSHR (their website is amazing by the way!). We talked and I found they were going to play after me… and we were talking about surveillance and technology and what the future might hold–all themes from the songs I was about to play.
So it was about time for me to get ready… The backstage at the Pilot Light is the same place where the bathrooms are, the ones everyone uses. I was waiting by those bathrooms, just thinking about anything else I needed to do, basically, when all of a sudden Katie Widloski appeared–I hadn’t seen her in maybe twenty years. Her older brother was/is one of my best friends since we were about 5 years old. So we talked for a minute, but it was really time for me to go onstage, so we had to stop.
About the show – I don’t know what to say about the show, really, but it was great. I had a ball and I feel like, having thought and imagined it for many hours beforehand, it was very comfortable and perfect for me, and I think some people liked it, and if some people hated it, they kept it to themselves.
Once my part of the show was over, MSHR started and played some very unusual synths that they had built. As they began, I packed up my things which seemed to take an inordinately long amount of time. I don’t know if there were people in the back who wanted to buy merch and left… but that’s very possible. It would be great to have someone else ready to do that, like I’ve heard the Rolling Stones do…
Their instruments were synthesizers they had constructed themselves with flashing, colored lights and different shapes like, unicorns? dinosaurs? It was incredibly loud! I had earplugs in and could feel my bones vibrating with the sound. I loved it. Also after I was finished performing I met Ice, or FKA Ice, who is married to Evan Lipson, a friend from Chattanooga, who used to have a tiki bar in his basement where I played once, many years ago. She was wearing cowboy/girl clothes and had blacked out one of her teeth. I really enjoyed her music, which was some pretty intense techno and sound collage with screaming.
So also, the Deslondes were playing at the Bijou Theater, and we had talked some about my coming onstage with them to sing a song, but we were really playing at the exact same time and it just couldn’t work out. Anyway, I went and hung out with them for about fifteen minutes in their green room. That was pretty fun. Sam, Riley, Desiree, Howe, Dan–I missed John James. When I saw Riley, I don’t know, I just love that guy. I couldn’t believe it. He’s gotten taller, I think. I didn’t remember just coming up to his armpit. He hugged me like I was his seven-year-old nephew. The next night, the Deslondes played again at the exact same time as I played…is that good or bad timing? Well, both, I guess.
I returned to the apartment my mom and brothers were renting and saw they had some old high school buddies over. They were talking till about 2 in the morning, and I was just plain exhausted and all the weird feelings of being back in Tennessee were rushing over me. This AirBnb was on or near the top floor of one of the high rises on Gay St. It was crazy to experience it, this fancy vacation place reserved for people who can afford it, directly overlooking an alley where homeless people camp out. The dissonance was quite uncomfortable. In the 25 years or so that I’ve been going to Knoxville there have always been homeless people downtown, so that this juxtaposition may seem completely normal, but it’s absolutely not. It’s always there in everybody’s mind and eating away, eating away, eating away. I tried to act normal and I suppose I did, and that’s what people do… I was talking to my brother’s partner Laura and, I don’t remember how this came up, but we started talking about the band Chicago, and we looked up this video on Youtube. Pretty weird, I would have hated this song when I was growing up, but now, and at that moment, despite how incredibly cheesy the video is, or perhaps enhanced by it, that song really sounded fantastic through the tiny cell phone speaker.
7 June 2026
The next morning, I went to breakfast with my mom, two brothers, and brother William’s partner Laura. We ate at Tupelo Honey, which is in Market Square. While walking there, we passed a woman spraypainting a mural in the alleyway just before. My Mom stopped to ask her what she was painting… she said something like, “You’ll have to come back later and see.”
I have a lot of memories here, including seeing Southern Culture on the Skids, a great band. Things really changed in Market Square. It’s not all bad, either, there seem to be more street musicians, and they were both really good: there was a steel drum and saw combo, and a girl playing a melodica.
I wandered a bit and actually somehow got separated from my family, even in such a small area and on such a short walk. I took a photo of the building next to Subway which for a year or so held Theater Central, where I did a few plays. This was an old department store and was very spacious – indeed, too spacious for the small theater. In 2026, the rent would definitely be too expensive for such a low-budget arts operation to exist in this location! I don’t remember what business now occupies that space – some kind of fancy clothing store, I think.
I was disoriented, though I knew they were going to Tupelo Honey, so I walked in there and looked around. I wondered if I would be stopped by someone for just walking in and looking around, but, no. I hadn’t been in a restaurant in a very long time. I never go to restaurants, and feel a little awkward in them these days, though it used to be a common thing when I lived in the US, and also in Spain, but not in France. It’s expensive and I’d have to drive to one, rather than walking. I guess that was also the case in other places I lived! But I don’t know, going to restaurants is something I rarely ever do, so that added another layer of weird/disorienting feeling.
Once we ate, it was already about time to go – at least, I can’t narrate every detail or I’ll never finish!
So, I drove onwards to Asheville. I tried to do it without Google Maps, and I did get to Asheville fine, but once I was there, I got pretty lost before I found Static Age Records. I was out at the university there, where I’d never been before, before turning Google Maps back on.
So I made it there…parked under the bridge near Static Age and went on in, saw Sophie and Jesse of the venue and Derek Clatterbuck.
This was the first time I’d been back to Asheville and Static Age since hurricane Helene. I didn’t get to spend time in the city walking around, but there were no markers in the venue that I saw of the event. It looked the same as ever (well, it’s always a bit different because Jesse is always re-envisioning spaces and rebuilding – so it was much the same, but a bit different). Static Age, for me, is one of the great venues, where there’s freedom to do anything and make it into a show and everyone is very chilled out. And there are a lot of good records around.
Before the show started, Priya and Robert, old friends from Asheville and members of the legendary visionary band Kreamy ‘Lectric Santa (kreamy.org) came up and talked, with their little dog too! We exchanged some stickers, and now I have a DIYabled (diyabled.com) sticker covering the Apple logo on this very computer!
At this show I played with Oil Derek, an old friend now, who I first met around the Bay area and up north when we were living in Sebastopol, California. He’s got some great fingerpicking and heavy dreaming songs that float in and out of space and time. There was AC Sapphire, who when we first met said she thought we had met before. “Oh!” I thought but did not remember having met. She set up some jewelry sales beside my array of merch. Looked like she makes some pretty cool jewelry! Later on, she shared some great songs and stories onstage – and after the whole show, she asked to cover one of my songs. I fumbled around trying to share my contact until I gave up and said, “tell me your number, and I’ll just call you.” Well, when I entered her number in my phone – whaddaya know – it was already in there! We never figured out where or when we met, but it must have happened at some point.
I got up and sang after AC, and had a ball. I wore the batik tapestries with Sea Turtles and fish that I’d safety-pinned into robes, sang all my latest hits, and tossed many candies and snacks out into the audience. I got to meet Greg Cartwright of many legendary Memphis bands which was an incredible honor!
And… so soon begun, the night was soon over, and I was hosted by Oil Derek at his place in Marshall, NC, about 30 minutes’ drive away. This was such a beautiful spot, and just full of lightning bugs! The house was detached, up on a hill, and you could see the edge of woods about 236 meters away (approximately), and it was honestly like watching Christmas lights.
8 June 2026
I slept very well there, and so deeply… it was hard to wake up, and start heading to Chattanooga, but I felt this visit would be incomplete without seeing my friend Jessie Smith who lives nearby. She has a healing spring at her house and offered its medicinal powers to me. I again had to follow Google Maps though I’ve been trying to separate myself forom that company. Jessie’s house is beautiful and in a beautiful spot, and we had a lot to talk about as always. It’s always like an instant conversation with no awkwardness when we meet, which is very rare for me! Maybe it’s because we’re both from the south and both maybe a bit in a different reality. She made some breakfast and coffee and we ate while overlooking her spring (which is routed through a hobby horse mouth into a hot tub shell) and with her very cute little dog that smiled really big and licked my face from time to time. We each played a song for the other, hers was a true story about how she’d dressed up as Santa during the Covid lockdown to deliver presents by boat, and nearly drowned. It was an amazing song like all hers are!
So, we talked about other things (family steamboat con-men, sculpture ideas, paintings found at antique shops, etc) and then I had to get on the road to Chattanooga. I drove down highway 64 (if I remember correctly) which was breathtakingly beautiful.
The car I was renting was a bit older and I wasn’t able to hook up my phone via bluetooth to it to listen to what I normally would whilst driving, but I’m glad that was the case because I was forced to listen to radio, like I used to (well, I would’ve probably changed out several CDs, but I didn’t have any of those). I ended up listening to a lot of sermons and right-wing talk radio, of which there is an enormous amount on the airwaves. It’s a ton of propaganda and the only alternatives are African-American stations that play African-American music (which were slightly rarer but really good, and if there was one of those available I would always pick it), the occasional Spanish-language station (even rarer and definitely what I’d pick as it’s good practice for Spanish and I like the music) and in the proximity of a city, National Public Radio, which can be sometimes great, usually mediocre, and sometimes really frustratingly both sides-y. I think it would be interesting to start broadcasting radio in the South – to broadcast talk shows about real life and play new, interesting music and local artists and generally feature non-Church, non-Republican, more local perspectives. I think it could be a hit!
So I made it in to Chattanooga to the Downers’ house and had a nice night, mostly of practicing some old songs with Matt. He reminded me of a song we used to play that we called “The Trombone Song” that got me really cracked up, because I’d forgotten about it, and how silly the words are, about losing a romantic partner due to someone’s attractive trombone playing. I really couldn’t stop laughing.
9 June 2026
The next day I went to Birmingham to meet my mom and her partner Jim. I stopped at the usual gas station, when the highway passes through Georgia, because the gas is generally cheaper there. But I realized how long I’d been gone when I got back on the highway and didn’t notice I was going in the wrong direction until I found myself back in Chattanooga… that was frustrating, as the traffic on I-24 had built up considerably! Anyway, I eventually got through and made it into Alabama and then into Birmingham. Once in Birmingham, I visited a great used bookstore called Reed’s Books and the Museum of Fond Memories. I really couldn’t believe how great this place was. It was all I could ask for in a used book and record store, filled with odd memorabilia and more things than I had time to look at. I bought several books here, including Jean Toomer’s Cane, Carson McCuller’s Member of the Wedding, a nonfiction book about the everyday experience of antebellum slavery called The Slave Community, Tao Lin’s Taipei, Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals to give my mom, and an old FATE magazine from 1971 to give my darlin, Yuri who is amassing a library of those. I was really looking for a paperback of The Ballad of the Sad Café, also by Carson McCullers, which is a short story Yuri and I read aloud to each other when we were first getting together.
I went from there to Jim’s house and got ready to visit him in the hospital. I visited him and my mom there, then my mom and I came back to his house and ordered a veggie pizza from Domino’s. I did it on an app, which of course reminded me of the 1990s Sandra Bullock thriller The Net. I fixed a broken reclining chair, and we watched a great short film called the Singers, based on a short story by Turgenev about a singing contest. I recommend it!
10 June 2026
This day, my mom and I drove to Abbeville to visit family there. It was a great trip, but in the interest of finishing this tour diary, I will not include this day. One highlight I will share is that we stopped at a produce market called Durbin Farms on the way and they had ziplock bags full of fresh butter beans, which I bought and cooked at mom’s house along with some yellow squash, in the same pots and pans she’s had since as long as I remember, probably before I was born! That was undoubtedly the culinary highlight of the trip.
11 June 2026
The next day mom and I went into downtown Abbeville – which is an outdoor neon sign museum at this point – and visited a few sites there, including the really nice coffee shop, Kava, and a hands-on science museum called ATTA. Kind of amazing that exists there. I got spun around in a chair to demonstrate a few things about inertia by Sandy Armstrong, a friend of my mother’s and a retired science teacher. When my dad died (suicide) and I lived in Abbeville, nearly twenty years ago now, one thing that was therapeutic for me was playing old country music with her husband, the barber, Wayne, who lived on the same street as my mom. In the years since, he too has died by suicide. It’s remarkable how many of us there are who have family members who died in that way, and when we do meet each other, I usually sense some kind of kinship that expresses itself as a deep value of just existing and just being.
Well, I could only stay such a short time. I had to go to Atlanta for the next show, which would be at Rowan Newby’s house, where I’ve played twice before (or maybe three times?). The drive was pleasant, very familiar as I would usually drive through Atlanta to get back to Chattanooga. I passed by the “Drive-Thru” Museum of Wonder in Seale, Alabama (museumofwonder.com). If I’d had longer, I would’ve driven by Carson McCullers’ house, which is in Columbus, Georgia. I really do love this part of Alabama and Georgia – the Wiregrass, they call it. It’s got this red-dust hot sandy faded-paint quality everywhere and just has its own special feeling and texture.
Well, Atlanta was next, and I had just been reading in some of my dad’s old things about how Atlanta was the city he lived in from birth through his ninth birthday. Their family was quite bourgeois (my grandad, who died a decade before I was born, was a clerk for Armour meat packing, having made it out of the coal mining town – Carbon Hill, Alabama – where he was born) and apparently lived in a pretty fancy suburban house, but I didn’t have time to track it down (though I have the address).
So, I found Rowan’s house a couple hours in advance of the soirée and we caught up a bit. Some friends came, old and new, and we had a really nice time. There was no rain in the forecast, and Rowan’s air conditioner was broken, so we decided to do the show in the back yard. That was a dream, as it was a beautiful Southern night (I even started singing that song, the Allen Toussaint one) and full of lightning bugs and crickets. Bradley Gaines Weaver (IG: @bradleygainesweaver) opened the show and I really loved his songs and chill, melodic style and the subtle rhythm box he was using.
Then came Evereman! Whose name is Jay Wiggins. I guess he doesn’t have a website, but his IG handle is @evereman. He played with his wife (name) and sang some great old time tunes and original protest songs. I first met Jay a bit over ten years ago when he put on a festival in Chattanooga – I was still living there at the time and my daughter was a baby. It was the first time, as I recall, I ever played to electronic/pre-recorded backing tracks for theatrical effect. I had just figured out how to do that by working with the great children’s theater group The Muse of Fire Project at the Chattanooga Library… kids wrote plays which sometimes included songs, which they wrote the words out to in the script, then I created a melody and a backing track in Garageband on the ipad to be performed onstage. That was a lot of fun, and happened just before the little Evereman festival, when I decided to do the same thing for myself. It’s not an original idea, of course, it’s just karaoke, but it really opened up a way of being more theatrical onstage that has been a lot of fun for me. ONE OF THESE DAYS I hope to have a Count Basie-esque big band that plays behind me… well, perhaps more Sun Ra Arkestra than Count Basie! Anyway, it was an absolute blast to see Evereman play!
And I sang after that, sitting down! Wow! So easy to play guitar sitting down! I wore my mask and robe get-up, I feel a bit more protected in those clothes, despite the heat! Anyway, it all seemed to go great and had a lot of fun.
Later that night I worked on a dance mix for the Chattanooga show and my taxes until about 3 in the morning!
June 12 & 13
Then I went to meet my friend who I actually met teaching English for coffee in the morning at 8, which woke me up in time to get on the road to Chattanooga, as I had a lot to prepare! Though now two weeks have passed and it may be hard for me to remember exactly what that was…
But, when I first came to Chattanooga, I knew I wanted to visit a new bookstore I’d heard about. It’s just past the Brainerd tunnels (a Chattanooga landmark) and is called the Reading Room. Man, it’s really nice – a perfect place to hang out. I’ve always loved the combination of coffee shop and used bookstore, and this place does it extremely well. It’s also a cocktail bar, which is probably necessary to pay the rent. I had an iced coffee there and bought a copy of Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht.
Then I went into town and stopped at the Northside Neighborhood House Thrift Store. I really wanted a pair of dress pants to wear onstage, and I found a pair for $1. That rarely happens, to go into a thrift store and find exactly what you want for very cheap! I also bought a CD of Judy Garland – Live at Carnegie Hall, also $1. I ended up listening to that for most of the remainder of the road trip.
My memory is a little fuzzy here, but I believe I went on to the venue, Matt and Marty Bohannon’s and George McEwan’s Cherry Street Tavern, which is a great venue right downtown. I promise next time I’ll play at JJ’s Bohemia! I wish I could go play for their 20th anniversary coming up. But anyway, Marty wanted to put on a 2-day Big Kitty mini-festival. I was all for it and wanted to plan a bunch of activities, but, of course, was so busy that I didn’t really get much planned. And Marty booked two nights of shows, including bands that I mostly didn’t know! It makes me feel pretty sad, honestly, not being more connected to the Chattanooga music scene. I would certainly love to be able to partly live there, but of course, would need some serious bank to do that as Chattanooga rents have gone through the roof!
Well, I did have one activity planned: my mom had given me a ziplock bag full of pastel-colored, Easter-themed candy corn (an item I had never seen before). I tasted a piece of it – not the best. But I rigged it up on a light fixture and we had a contest to guess how many pieces of candy corn were in the bag. It was a hit! I saw people examining the bag all night, figuring, ciphering their way to the magic number which was – get ready for it – 195 (I counted them beforehand). In fact, the winner of the contest was the very first person to guess – Rich, who played drums for Stupid Future from Knoxville. He won a copy of my newest book, Bobby Bunny!
Joey was doing sound! Everyone loves Joey, and I believe every person I mentioned playing at the Cherry St Tavern to said, who is the sound guy there? I love that guy! Joey? yeah Joey!
So here are my memories of this first day. Marty Bohannon began the show, and had the most hilarious stage banter. I wish I’d recorded it. And his great, great songs. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to experience Marty Bohannon’s sly, funny, passionate, tender and fierce ways again!
Next was Stupid Future, from Knoxville – this was a wonderful crossover, as – well, you might be far away from this world – but though relatively close to each other, the Knoxville and Chattanooga music scenes actually don’t overlap that much. I have kind of overlapped since I grew up near Knoxville and then lived in Chattanooga for several years, so both places feel like home to me. But it’s fairly rare to see a Knoxville band play in Chattanooga, so this was quite a momentous occasion! Stupid Future (stupidfutureband.bandcamp.com) is a real rockin’ 3-piece with Harold Heffner and Elizabeth Lawrensen and the famous Rich of candy-corn-amount guessing fame.
Next was Franzy – and this was a wild experience. I didn’t know who Franzy was, except by their Instagram account, which only described their music as “lo-fi death jazz” and the pictures they shared are all flyers that, by the look of them, made me think they were a techno band. Actually, I thought it was just one person who made techno, as that’s how techno generally goes. I was very surprised when my buddy Lewis Oehmig came and told me he was playing…in Franzy! And his brother Matt was in the band too! I always loved Lewis so this was like a surprise birthday present for me. It reminded me of my grandmother’s 80th birthday (the one who would have just turned 110, so it was 30 years ago). It was supposed to be a surprise party, but as she had dementia, my Uncle Cha quipped that whether we shared it with her or not–the party would still be a surprise. Anyway, Franzy was great, and Lewis’ style reminded me of Nicolas Cage in Con Air, which is a huge compliment, I think! And I didn’t feel like that would hurt Lewis’ feelings so I told him and I don’t think he’d seen the movie, but Lewis, if you’re reading this, you should see it!
Franzy’s music is amazing, I don’t even quite know how to describe it, it’s so special to them… I can’t think of a band I would compare them to at all. But they have a lot of energy, and rock out, have guitar solos and poppy vocal interplay. It’s really fantastic music.
After Franzy I believe I played, which was a blast!
Then Sunny War played after me – now Sunny War is extremely special, and I don’t quite know how to describe her music either, but she has very intricate fingerpicked guitar and an alto voice that sounds like bubbles floating. She has a song covered on the new Willie Nelson album apparently and has played in Bill’s band Heavy Comforter, though she did not on this night…
And Heavy Comforter played right after Sunny War. They are one of the bands I requested (the others being the Bohannon Brothers and for me and Matt to have an Old Time Travelers reunion).
I forgot to mention that I was kind of introducing bands, as a host — to some degree. I was giving some random facts about what time it was in different places in the world, and whose birthday it was (Anne Frank and George H.W. Bush were both born on 12 June. And, interestingly, Bush is the elder of the two by a few years). As Heavy Comforter were setting up, I stated some of these facts on the microphone and perhaps played a little flute – I’ve been playing some very amateur flute – and I offered to join Heavy Comforter on the instrument. Jarrod Gee who was playing guitar, insisted that I do so. Also, as he was setting up his guitar, he told me he thought that the sound of Bill Callahan’s new album was inspired by my album, Excelsior Breeze Catchers. Huh? That seems totally insane, and probably is, but he was very serious about it. “Why do you think he wouldn’t know that album?” he said… well, if Bill Callahan is reading this, is it true? I admit, after Jarrod telling me this i listened to a couple songs on it, but I didn’t really see much of a connection. Actually, when I listened to it, I realized that I had actually already listened to a song off it when I first heard it’d come out!
So I played flute with Heavy Comforter, after wanting to hear them live for years! I probably, honestly, would’ve enjoyed it more if I’d just been listening, but it was a lot of fun to try to play along to songs I knew, but did not know how to play, on an instrument that I kind of know how to play by myself, but don’t know which notes are which, at all! Anyway, you couldn’t really hear an unamplified flute over a whole rock band, except between songs, but it was tons of fun.
I spent the night at the Downers again – getting in very late – and was back at the Cherry Street Tavern in time for day 2 to get rolling.
Matt Bohannon started it off, though unlike Marty he had a full rock band playing with him, and that lovable sweet’n’salty Bohannon attitude!
After Matt Bo was Stone Fruits, who were so good! I did not know any of them beforehand, so this was a great surprise, and another moment of really wishing that I could still be a part of the music in this town… They also had a kind of pop interplay between the guitar-vocals and drum-vocals, which I really dug.
Next up was the Thomas Dollbaum band from New Orleans. They were on a tour and had that insular band thing going so I didn’t really get a feel for those guys, but they seemed nice – they left early, probably tired from touring! Next time!
Then came the Old Time Travelers reunion. We hadn’t played onstage together in so long that I’d kind of forgotten about how we never used individual mics. It was always really tricky for us to get a good sound that way, and to hear each other properly that way. That brought back many an awkward memory of dealing with a sound engineer who understandably doesn’t want to use a condenser mic in a live setting. So, we decided to play out on the back patio of the bar, without any amplification. This worked out pretty well, except the fans from all the air conditioners were quite loud above us. Still, I used my best singing techniques to cut through without hurting myself and had a ball.
After Old Time Travelers I had the pleasure of hearing old buddy Oil Derek again! And then I played a last time! It was great – I forgot to mention that earlier that day I had visited Jarrod Gee’s studio in my old neighborhood of St Elmo, where he had generously removed the vocals from two of my songs so I could sing them karaoke-style – I Saw a Man Melting and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Thanks Jarrod!
That night I went and hung out with Billy, Tristan the neural network PhD and synth player, and Chloe the one-eyed dog until about 5 or 6 AM. Next morning Bill and I went back to his house for a minute and checked out some of the paintings he’s been making, and Bill gave me a copy of his new book, Trash on Trash. (https://www.wmjohnsonphotography.com). He’s an incredibly good photographer and his paintings and drawings are really blowing my mind too…
14 June, Leaving Chattanooga, heading to Nashville
This morning a warning message showed up on my rental car saying “Park vehicle in a safe place immediately.” I was pretty worried about it. I still needed to get to Nashville and then return the car back in Knoxville, about 5-6 hours of driving. I went to the art museum to return the Downers’ house keys to Page, who was working there, and she took me in an exhibition she wanted me to see. It was pretty amazing, very psychedelic sculptural things about an alien world where the beings are very empathetic (https://www.huntermuseum.org/exhibition/saya-woolfalk-empathic-universe). And whaddaya know but Matt and Marty Bohannon and kids were there at the museum together! I was taking a picture of some mannequins hanging on the wall and someone came around me from behind, filming me! It was Matt Bohannon! Whoa! It was great to see them but I was also really stressed out about that car. Marty offered me his van, which was very sweet of him. But, it turned out I could drive the car. I notified the renter and they said “that happens, don’t worry about it.” And I just continued, and it was totally fine.
Anyway, I made it up to Nashville to my brother’s house. He’d cleaned up for me and had a bed ready, so nice. There was some really nice incense burning in the bathroom—pine-scented, I believe. I didn’t have long to be there, though, before I had to head over to FUNLAND, which is Terry Williams’ and Tim Findlen’s home and workshop where they also have a little home bar and put on shows sometimes! And this was to be one of them!
Tim set up his workshop (he restores antique windows) as a little venue and a lot of folks came over – again, many friends from different eras and places in my life. I must mention too that Erin Rae, who I have not actually met in person but who covered a song of mine with Mat Davidson and with whom i have many mutual friends, set up this show! And unfortunately she had to go on tour with Kevin Morby and so missed it, but, if you’re reading this, Erin, thank you for putting it together! Shows are not easy for me in Nashville, and it was really a great treat to see this amazing compound (there are intimations of creating a minigolf course there–a dream of mine!–, and a few really interesting sculptural elements to that end here and there.)
People I saw here were Laura Baisden, Daniel Binkley, Casey Meikle, and Chris Acker — of course Daniel Binkley and I have been friends since way back, and he plays on the Florence album as well as a sort of lost album by a band called Dos Bros – which actually had three people in it. And we mostly played old time music together with the New Binkley Brothers, all around the Chattanooga area. It was great to catch up with him and all those folks…
And at the end of that concert, this little mini tour was done. I returned to my hometown of Maryville the next day and caught up with old friends Liz Tapp, Adam Ewing and John Kriese and his partner Alex… and the four kids between the two couples! It was a real treat, and I was really sleepy. Liz had ordered tofu curry for me from the same Maryville Thai restaurant that opened when we were in high school, and which we used to go to (Lemon Grass). What a great experience… anyway, I have written, I believe, all I can stand, and though it be quite limited to the fundamentals, I hope it has pleased you.
